Why Only Some Monkeys Have Awesome Tails

To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords: Prehensile Tail: An animal tail that can grasp or hold objects. A wide range of animals have prehensile tails, including mammals (like opossums and kinkajous), reptiles (like chameleons), amphibians (like salamanders), and fish (seahorses). Old World Monkeys (Cercopithecidae): A family of primates native to Africa and Asia that includes baboons, guenons and macaques – all of which have non-prehensile tails. New World Monkeys (Platyrrhini): A family of primates native to Central and South America that includes spider monkeys, howlers, and capuchins – all of which have prehensile tails. Prehensile tails evolved twice in new world monkeys: In atelines (spider monkey and howlers) the prehensile tail tip is like a finger and incredibly dextrous. In cebines (capuchin monkeys) the tip is furry and not quite as dextrous. *Species featured in this video: Spider Monkey (and Diddy Kong!) Ficus insipida (tripical fig tree) Barbary Macaque (from Northern Africa) Rhesus Macaque(from India) Opossum Chameleon Salamander (Aneides lugubris) Seahorses (actually Horsea!) MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices